Puzzle solved: the appeal of City of Girls

I've been thinking lately about not fitting in. I do my best to think about this with a minimum of angst, because probably every person on this planet has had moments of feeling like they don't fit in. It's part of being human, and there's nothing particularly interesting about it.

But some of us Don't Fit In more than others of us don't fit in. I suspect that if I were a six-year-old now, I would be diagnosed as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. I've never quite managed social interactions naturally. I miss obvious social cues. I'm pretty good at reading tension and mood of a room, but I'm definitely not good at interpreting body language and facial expressions.

I think that's one reason why slow, beautifully acted movies and TV shows don't work for me. I heard a podcaster say this week that the reason they love Claire Foy so much in the TV show The Crown is because the camera can linger on her face and you can see an entire story happen in her facial expressions. I immediately understood why I've never been able to get into that show, even though everything about it sounds like something I would love. When the camera lingers on an actor's face, I just get impatient. It feels like a vanity shot-- look how gorgeous I am in all this makeup! Unless they're actually crying or laughing, I cannot see a single thing going on in the actor's face/eyes/expression.

I've especially never managed social interactions with women very well (I'm talking mainly about groups here, not individual, one-on-one interactions). Women In Groups are so complicated. I've heard it said that you can never trust a woman who is more comfortable with men than with women, so all I can say is, don't trust me! Because in a social situation like a party or a group gathering, I would a hundred times rather talk sports or tech or photography or anything with men than try and understand the nightmare-ish complications of social talk among women.

There are a whole bunch of expectations that I completely miss. Or sometimes I get them, but I can't take them seriously. I mean, I get that if you dress in ways that fit with current fashions, you feel like a competent human being who can manage adulting, but there's always an aspect of it to me that is like playing a game. I can't take seriously that someone really cares about what I'm wearing.

I wear jeans to church-- clean ones, in good condition. To me, showing respect for my surroundings means I pulled out a clean pair of jeans and I'm not wearing sneakers and a sweatshirt. But to some of the women in our congregation, it is a sign of disrespect that I don't dress up more for church. That's so far from the way that I think that it was years before I even picked up on this. I had no clue that anybody cared or even noticed what I wear. I'm just clueless about this stuff.

Aside: Remember back in the sixties and seventies when your mom would tell you that it doesn't matter what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that counts? Can you even imagine someone saying that now? In these days of selfies and continuous online presence and endless make-up vlogs and fashion influencers?

So this entire setup was just to tell you that I finally figured out my problem with City of Girls, the bestselling novel by Elizabeth Gilbert that came out earlier this year. I am a sort-of fan of Gilbert's. I've like several of her books, fiction and non, and even the ones I haven't liked I've found to be interesting.  She really is an amazing writer. So I was looking forward to her new one, especially because so many women were posting reviews that said it was their favorite novel of the year, an instant classic, the most fun they'd had reading a book in forever.

But I could not get into it. Gilbert's writing was great, as it always is, but City of Girls just seemed dull to me. I 've read plenty of books where people got drunk and partied, but I've never read a book where there were pages and pages of descriptions of drunken partying to the point where it just got tedious. I mean, seriously, where was her editor? There is no new information, no character development (until it all comes to a crashing halt), just pages and pages of going out and drinking until you can't stand up and are puking into the gutter.

Then I read a brief description of it this morning on Vox's list of the 15 best books of 2019, and the light dawned. City of Girls is a girly-girl book. It's about getting dressed up and wearing great clothes and being dazzling, and feeling powerful because you are so gorgeous. I can understand that as a mental exercise, but it has almost zero meaning to me in practice. The Vox reviewer said that the thing that had stuck with her months after she read it was the clothes. Whaaaaat? No wonder I didn't get it. It is not a book for me. 

So problem solved, because it was really puzzling me why so many people (not just women) love, love, love this book.

Sorry I've been so absent, but for some reason, around here the stretch from Thanksgiving through the first week in December is the busiest time of the year. But I'm almost done-- this past week has been insane, but then next Wednesday I have my community band Christmas concert, and then I have almost nothing on the calendar through the rest of the month. I will drive you crazy with all the things I've been wanting to write about but haven't had time.

Have a great weekend.